Zardon

Many times we have been asked to have a folding @ home for Driver Heaven and many times we have contemplated it. However our good friends at AMD/ATI have asked for our support so we are folding with them TEAM 51394.

To make yourself known as a DH member please fold within this team with a DH in front of your user name: example "DH-ZARDON" or "[DH]-Zardon".

As many of you may have seen, ATI recently introduced stream computing to the world (using the power of the graphics processor for something other than rendering 3D graphics).

The first major initiative of stream computing was a project with Stanford University called Folding@Home. Folding@Home uses the concept of distributed computing to use 100,000’s of PC systems to help simulate the process of folding proteins (many diseases/cancers are caused by proteins miss-folding). Stanford uses this data to try and better understand why proteins miss-fold and eventually work towards the goal of finding cures for diseases and cancers.

On October 2nd ATI released GPU customized version of the Folding@Home client that folds proteins 20-40 times faster than any modern CPU or non-ATI GPU, you can check out ATi's website for more details over here Like the CPU version of the Folding Client, the GPU client only runs when there are spare cycles available (i.e. when the CPU or GPU are sitting idle), so you don’t have to worry about the Folding client slowing down their systems when using it for work. Be sure to also check out Driver Heaven's coverage of the Stream Technology over here.


Go to the link here to download the Folding client: http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html

Regardless of whether you download the CPU or GPU version of the Folding@Home client – be sure to join the ATI team!! (team number 51394)

UPDATE: You can now fold with your playstation 3, and the good news is, the Cell processor kicks ASS with folding !

niceguyrichy

System Specs

DH-richy here

thoroughly worthwise cause, a comp I didn't mind not winning for a change

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Zardon

Well we should have more competitions to help spur the interest shortly, however we hope people will do it anyway regardless.

SFOSOK

System Specs

I have no clue what folding is.

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Erroneus

Read this part:

"Folding@Home uses the concept of distributed computing to use 100,000’s of PC systems to help simulate the process of folding proteins (many diseases/cancers are caused by proteins miss-folding). Stanford uses this data to try and better understand why proteins miss-fold and eventually work towards the goal of finding cures for diseases and cancers."

So you can actually help, just by folding on a single PC. I'm using my laptop for it, so it's always on, except for when I'm sleeping

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temeteus82

System Specs

[DH]Temeteus here

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SFOSOK

System Specs

I read that, but it doesn't really explain or tell me what folding is. Only what folding at home does. Its frustrating also cause I don't know if its a program a website or what.

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nerdrock

System Specs

All i know, is folding protiens is clearly complicated as all hell, so they need our help to do it, for medical research. That's pretty cool, in my opinion. I see people running seti@home or whatever, and want to punch them in the face. There's no life in space that your computer is going to find, you retard, why don't you help humans here, instead?

Side note, does the folding client do a lot of network traffic? I want to install this on my machine at the office, and the only thing keeping me from doing so is the potential for too much internet traffic caused by it, cause it's at a premium right now. (Still enough to troll DH though)

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temeteus82

System Specs

All I know is client uses net connection when it's finished WU and is uploading it and downloading new one.

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SFOSOK

System Specs

So everybody is doin something though no one has any clue what it does or what it is doing?

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Vikingod

System Specs

Nope, i've been monitoring mine at home, and from what I can tell, it only really communicates when sending or receiving projects (which you won't notice heavy traffic), and only happens once every few days. Short answer, it won't affect your network.

Also, for those who don't know what folding is. A quick definition is "a protein assuming its three dimentional functional shape" . The reason all the research is being focused on it is to help understand genetics chemistry, as well as disease research (neurodegenerative, cancer, even genetic). By simulating this process, its a way of testing the good and bad combinations and conditions of the process. Also, simulating the final shapes of proteins is very beneficial to drug research, and is very effective. more information is out there, maybe try looking for a wiki (this is mostly from my bio classes in college).

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Iria

DH-Iria. Despite the fact it doesn't really take up many resources, I'm only using it on my work laptop. For gaming, I want as little running as possible.

pr0digal jenius

4 threads of it running ATM...hooray Xeons


great cause.


And SFOSOK....it maps out protein folding patterns and sends the data to Stanford, where they compile it in an attempt to figure out WHY they misfold, or, in laman's terms...what causes alzheimers or cancer

SFOSOK

System Specs

That kinda makes a little bit more sense but it would seem better to use a few supercomputers or servers. Something meant more for this.

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Zardon

Check this page out for a FAQ http://folding.stanford.edu/faq.html#project.folding. (and in answer to your question....

Why not just use a supercomputer? Modern supercomputers are essentially clusters of hundreds of processors linked by fast networking. The speed of these processors is comparable to (and often slower than) those found in PCs! Thus, if an algorithm (like ours) does not need the fast networking, it will run just as fast on a supercluster as a supercomputer. However, our application needs not the hundreds of processors found in modern supercomputers, but hundreds of thousands of processors. Hence, the calculations performed on Folding@Home would not be possible by any other means! Moreover, even if we were given exclusive access to all of the supercomputers in the world, we would still have fewer cycles than we do with the Folding@Home cluster! This is possible since PC processors are now very fast and there are hundreds of millions of PCs sitting idle in the world.